Day: November 19, 2012

This is exciting news for those who are looking for a way of incorporating literacy into their English or Language or ELL courses. Or History. Or Drama. Or…

Twitter has announced the “Twitter Fiction Festival“. Ideas were submitted and the Festival will run over 5 days at the end of November. You’ll follow the hashtag #twitterfiction to get involved.

Twitter is a frontier for creative experimentation, and we want to invite authors and creative storytellers around the world to push the bounds of what’s possible with Twitter content.

The platform is incredibly powerful. One of my favourite all time activities in this format was the Titanic Twitter Reenactment. I was riveted to the feed – it would be the closest that I would get to being there. Of course, I saw the movie but that is a medium for our times. Imagine the experience with just with the messages (or twitter messages). That’s reality. It also honours the mind.

I was so impressed that I wanted to keep it for future reference. I’ve used it in presentations and will share the link with you.

Of course, there are more ideas along the same line.

One of the ideas that absolutely proved the application to the classroom was Danika Barker‘s experiment taking Shakespeare to Twitter. Talk about a way to engage the texting generation.

This gathered her some media coverage as well. The Ontario College of Teachers featured her efforts in this story. The event was also a big-time story in the London Free Press. Sadly, when I tried to retrieve the link, it failed from the lfpress site. However, Google’s cached version of the story is available here.

Danika has done this a number of times and keeps Storifys of them all. And why not? The results are <= 140 characters but the thoughts, reading, and research from the classroom is very evident. As a student, you wouldn’t want to get caught up in the middle of a Twitter stream not knowing what was going on.

The concept is very powerful and extremely engaging. Make sure that you give the Twitter Fiction Festival a look. You might just be inspired to join in or create a project of your own.

“If you’ve wondered where many of those YouTube videos get their background music from, you’ve come to the right place. Music with Creative Commons licenses are music compositions written, produced and shared by people who do not charge anything when you use their music for your own use, commercially or non-commercially.”

“Professionals look for people that know how to stay both current and professional in the middle of a social age. There are several things that teachers can begin teaching students early on about social media that can help them as they enter college and the job force.”